Japan’s hard-earned lessons in energy insecurity may have become the most relevant playbook in global energy markets grappling with the unprecedented Iran war supply shock.

Few countries have lived through the combination of supply disruption, price shocks, import dependence and decarbonization pressures now confronting energy systems as intensely — or as early — as Japan. When the Fukushima disaster in 2011 forced the country to shut virtually its entire nuclear fleet almost overnight, the world’s third-largest economy lost roughly 30% of its electricity generation capacity in a matter of months.

What followed was a structural national stress test that has now lasted more than a decade.

Japan had to scramble for replacement fuel, rebuild electricity market structures, manage public anger over soaring power bills, maintain industrial competitiveness and simultaneously pursue climate goals — all as one of the world’s most resource-poor major economies.

The scars are still visible. Japanese households and industry continue to face some of the highest electricity prices in the developed world. LNG import dependence deepened dramatically after Fukushima, exposing the country to repeated waves of global gas volatility, from the 2021-22 European energy crisis to the disruptions triggered by the 2022 Ukraine war, and now, with the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

Yet Japan has also garnered what few countries possess today: a deeply operational understanding of energy resilience under prolonged stress.

What the world is confronting today, in compressed form – especially Asian importers reliant on Middle Eastern oil and gas flows – is the exact challenges Japan has spent 15 years learning to navigate.

One of the clearest lessons lies in liquefied natural gas procurement.

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